While at the full tide
he tells us it was swept by the sea and always by the river, and thus
the sewage was carried off and the air purified, and this so
thoroughly, that even before its establishment by Augustus the
district was considered so healthy that the Roman governors had chosen
it as a spot in which to train gladiators.[1] That river we know from
Pliny[2] was called the Bedesis; and the same writer tells us that
Augustus built a canal which brought the water of the Po to Ravenna.
[Footnote 1: Strabo, v. 7.]
[Footnote 2: Pliny, iii. 20.]
Tacitus in his _Annals_[1] merely tells us that Italy was guarded on
both sides by fleets at Misenum and Ravenna, and in his _Histories_[2]
speaks of these places as the well known naval stations without
stopping to describe them. While Suetonius,[3] though he mentions the
great achievement of Augustus, does not emphasise it and does not
attempt to tell us what these ports were like.
[Footnote 1: Tacitus, Ann. iv. 5.]
[Footnote 2: Tacitus, Hist. ii. 100; iii. 6, 40.]
[Footnote 3: Suetonius, _Augustus_.]
Perhaps the best description we have of Augustan Ravenna comes to us
from a writer who certainly never saw the port in its great Roman
days, but who probably followed a well established tradition in his
description of it.
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